Intersticios (Dec 2018)
Historical productivity, institutional heterogeneity and power dynamics. Rethinking the State from the Argentinian case.
Abstract
This paper offers some hypotheses to problematize and open the discussion about the political theoretical coordinates that allow us to approach the problem of the State in Nuestra America. Specifically, we emphasize three points: a- The historical productivity of the Latin American States. Here we follow the contributions did by Martín Cortés in his reflection on the “leviatán criollo”. b- The intrinsic heterogeneity of contemporary state formations. In that point we offer a re-reading of Laclau's use of the concepts of sedimentation-reactivation to think politics. c- The state apparatus and the market as instances of power’s condensation. Totalization and reinsurance instances of the multiple institutions that organize the social life, its productive and reproductive dynamics. Here we re-read Foucault's distinction between the old sovereign power to kill and the biopolitical power to let die. We do that in light of the Hinkelammert's theory about the power dynamics of state and market. These three ideas allow us to open a debate in the field of contemporary political theory about the relevance to reformulate the concept of the state and, at once, to propose some hypotheses about it. The reformulation proposed help us to construct an effective conceptual instruments to map with greater precision the topography of forces in which popular Latin American struggles take place.
